Once a round, at the least. So in practice, you will have to start holding off using all your Greater Channelings at once, and begin portioning based on a Sublimation once a round and other possible sources (in practice, high Shadow is now key for the CaP node.)

@Reman UH OH. I found an issue, technically a "big" one, due to being a core component to the dream endgame 1 turn death by spellcast.

Mana Sublimation actually cannot be spammed. Not sure if it is due to some oddity around being an Enchantment or what, but I used it once, and now cannot use it again this round due to "not having a target". Does this mean it actually can only be used once a round, in practice? Or worse?

@Reman Sooo... if you wound up properly motivated. What would an alternate Order T5 look like?

Yes, I am aware this is a longshot, but fact is God Emperor is, to me, the most disappointing T5. Rulers and heroes will steal its best stuff, and I can't help but hate the forced idea by the name, lol.

Glancing at this mod, I read it as Tome of Catalytic Converter and got excited that maybe it added cars to the game. However, this is amazing despite my let down that it's not about cars

Holy cow this is AMAZING! What a great spellbook, what a great design!

I wouldn't mind seeing a tier 5 chaos tome focused entirely around fire. Not everyone wants to go the demon route, some of us just want to burn things.

I have yet to try this tome but it seems like a lot of fun! I always wanted easier (though not easy) access to repeat spells. It also makes bringing mythic units a lot more enticing.

However, I was wondering what your experience was with AI using this tome? AI have enough income modifiers (at least at higher difficulties) that mana is basically a non-issue for them, and mid/late game they often have at least 1~ mythic unit per stack. I feel like the long-ish CD should stop it from getting too oppressive but I can't help but feeling a bit wary after having fought Mystic> Attunement-culture on realms with the infinite spellcast-trait a few times. ^^

WE NEED BLESSED LAND TERRAFORM ARGLEBAGHADKK!!!

... Wasn't expecting it in a Materium tome tho, lol. But actually, that checks out.

@Daverin2112 My idea was for a "Tome of Infinite Wealth". The main gimmick would be a building that produces +15 gold and +1 imperium, but you can build it infinitely. This would let any player with the tome eventually scale out of control if nobody stops them (or gets a victory condition first).

Other skills:
-terraforming to blessed terrain, getting +5 gold per tile terraformed
-unit enchantment that gives +2 armor, +2 resistance, +2 immunity, but is very expensive (e.g. 10 gold per unit)
-a spell that costs 1000 gold which gilds everything in a 2 tile radius and summons a gold golem and gold dragon
-A siege project around bribes that costs something high (e.g. 1500) that gives huge bonuses like +8 siege score, causes 25% of enemies to go insane on the first turn, maybe 1 or 2 go insane for the entire battle, a few units pop up in the enemy's backline as a "riot", etc.

@Reman I actually am curious enough to ask now, what would an alternate T5 materium tome look like?

Planning on retexture the custom creature? Making it very blue-skinned with glowing golden eyes would fit with the tome colors well.

@Daverin2112 Thanks for the bug report, I've fixed that issue too.

@Reman So the Arcane Crucible is showing up on turn 1 without the tome unlocked.

I have done a few stat tinker mods. Even something as simple as assigning two new properties, watching one work, and the other not. is all I needed to know about their mod editor.

So I defo get it. I WOULD love to see those tomes, tho. Creator at least actually does a pretty good job of giving power, but Order a) irks me with the name and b) does NOT represent all the facets of order anymore.

Chaos just needs a ton of love period, lol. Nature is alright.

@Daverin2112 The minor bug where this was being classified as a Shadow tome in the Encyclopedia has been fixed.

Also, I'd love to *eventually* make a Tier V tome for all affinities, but that'd represent a LOT of work. The modding tools for this game are kinda dogshit (limited in what you can do, near-zero error logging, tedious to connect things, connections between elements make no sense and often fail for seemingly no reason, etc.) that even building small mods is a pain. I have some ideas for a Materium Tier V tome that I'd say there's about a 50-50 shot of me making. As for Order/Chaos/Nature though? It's a total crapshoot as to whether I'll ever get around to it.

Are you planning any other T5 tomes? Both of yours so far have knocked it out of the part as far as the ideas go.

Nah, I mostly agree with you. I just know there is a couple of modded Tomes and units who would work soooooo well with this. But honestly, the fact this -wasn't- the T5 astral from the start itself was a major letdown.

So, uh, let's talk balance.

In my view, Tier V tomes should be soft game-enders, and I think the vanilla Tier V tomes mostly fail at this. Now I know people are probably going to come in here and claim that "turning every Mythic unit into a Wizard King is stupidly broken" or something like that, and while it's clearly quite powerful I honestly don't think it's *that* overpowered. For 3 reasons:

1) It uses Mythic units, and Mythic units kinda suck at baseline.

2) You're not taking any other Tier V tomes, so presumably you'll be slapping out Tier III and Tier IV spells, which are still powerful but are a definite step down.

3) The upkeep cost. 60 mana per unit per turn is really quite a lot and it adds up quick once you have more than 1 or 2. If you're rich enough that you have 5k+ mana income per turn sitting unused, then OK, you've already won and this will just speed up the process.

With those points in mind, I'm interested to hear what other peoples' experiences are.

Goofy minor issue; it shows as Shadow instead of Astral affinity in Encylopedia.

This... This one is going to be scary.